An Insatiable Drive To Prove How Smart I Am

A scary thing happened to me in Macro 2 last week, the lecturer asked a question and I hoped that he would ask me, because I knew the answer.

This lecturer moves at a break neck speed, thus its actually rare for any student to know what he is talking about. He also 'strongly recommends' on 6-9 hours of self directed study in the subject per week.

I often provide answers in class, but this one was different, I really at some sickening subconscious level just wanted everybody else in the class to know how smart I was. The subject was hard, (not necessarily worthwhile) and it was taught hard (I strongly suspect Macroeconomics makes itself much harder than it needs to be through some variation of the 'blinded by science' logical fallacy.) and I just wanted to prove somehow that I was harder. An image I know I won't be able to keep exerting the effort to maintain.

But most times I'm self conscious of calling out all the answers, but in other lectures, the lecturers have this terrible habit of posing a question to the class and then just standing around for 10 minutes asking 'anyone?... anyone??...ANYONE???'

It's like Water-drop torture when you know the answer, hearing this incessant plea to the greater number for somebody, somebody to provide the answer. The subject matter I think is often not objectively hard - it is mostly a sight less difficult than year 12 maths subjects. And if its true that you only retain about 7% of your highschool learnings, then these kids fresh out of highschool should be doing better than me.

But seriously, quite often nobody, nobody will speak up. I wait for somebody else to take the 'psuedo-glory' of answering the teachers question, but none come and eventually I just have to yell out 'scatter plot' to keep the class moving (or whatever the answer is/was).

But I squarely blame the teachers for putting me in this position. Maybe they come from a cultural background where they are used to classes full of unashamed people desperate to prove how smart they are and are assailed with a chorus of correct answers to their rudimentary questions. But it isn't the case here.

Furthermore, it's like Janice's terrible manner of delegating chores, when she says 'could one of you kids do the dishes' it effectively means 'nobody do the dishes' the dishes have a higher chance of being done when she doesn't ask. If she assigned the chore to somebody then somebody would do it, but in delegation terminology anybody is synonoymous with nobody.

And if they wait around for ten minutes for me to step up to the 'anybody' title, it doesn't exactly prove that the class is following the lesson, it just proves that I follow the lesson. The more I answer questions in fact the less confident she should get in her teaching abilities. Such a concentration of input can't be indicitive that everybody understands the task.

Anyway I have a day off today I intent to use it. It's just sad that University instead of providing me an opportunity to overcome an interpersonal failing seems to be forcing it back upon me. The only lecturer that doesn't teaches a subject as archaic, useless and difficult as Barn Dancing.